The cost of a long distance telephone call is usually paid by the calling party rather than by the called party. Payment for the call is typically collected from the calling party by the carrier that originated the service, either directly or through the agency of the caller""s local telephone service provider. Consequently, when a call is placed from a first location served by an originating carrier to a second location served by a different terminating carrier, provision must be made to share with the terminating carrier some of the revenue collected by the originating carrier from the calling party.
For international telephone calls, this revenue sharing has traditionally been accomplished through the use of settlement agreements. Settlement agreements typically establish an accounting rate related to the cost of connecting the call between the countries, and specify how the accounting rate will be split between the two carriers. This split is typically 50-50.
For example, assume that a United States carrier and an overseas carrier negotiate a settlement agreement with a one dollar per minute accounting rate and a 50-50 revenue split. In accordance with the agreement, the U.S. carrier must pay 50 cents for every minute of connect time to called locations serviced by the overseas carrier. Conversely, the overseas carrier must pay 50 cents for every minute of connect time on calls terminated by the U.S. carrier.
As has been recognized, however, the negotiated accounting rate is frequently significantly higher than the actual cost of completing the international call. See, e.g., Frieden, Accounting Rates: The Business of International Telecommunications and the Incentive to Cheat, 43 Federal Communications Law Journal 111, 117, which is hereby incorporated by reference. For this reason, and because outbound calling volumes from the United States are significantly greater than inbound calling volumes from many foreign countries, U.S. carriers make large outbound payments to overseas carriers. In large measure, these charges are ultimately passed on to rate payers.
This payment imbalance is exacerbated when overseas carriers route inbound U.S. traffic under their control via private telephone lines into the United States. In this way, the overseas carriers are able to avoid paying high accounting rate settlements for calls to the United States from their countries, while receiving high accounting rate settlements from U.S. carriers who are forced to route outbound U.S. traffic through the overseas carrier because the overseas carrier is a monopolist in its home country. Moreover, overseas carriers often employ these alternative less-expensive routings for inbound U.S. traffic despite express contractual provisions in settlement agreements prohibiting such behavior. These developments are occurring against a backdrop of increasing data communications. From a bandwidth use viewpoint, data communications today comprise the majority of all international telecommunication. Many of the activities of routing voice communications so as to bypass international settlements occur via voice over data networks, often in the form of voice over Internet Protocol (IP).
To date, U.S. carriers have been forced to suffer such payment imbalances and have no immediate way to respond to breaches of contract by overseas carriers because of the significant time and expense required to reconfigure the telecommunications network to reroute calling traffic. The cumbersome reconfiguration process gives foreign carriers the opportunity to route inbound U.S. traffic via private lines, and otherwise run up settlement balances, without fear of retaliation from U.S. carriers.
More generally, this inflexible routing structure precludes telephone service providers from taking advantage of fluctuations in world-wide telephone rates. It would be desirable to provide a way (e.g., through dynamic routing) to respond to rate changes so as to increase the efficiency of the telecommunications infrastructure and pass the savings on to the consumer. There is also a need to provide telecommunications carriers and others (e.g., investors) with means to dynamically purchase and sell blocks of telephone connection time and bandwidth.
The need for flexible allocation of connection routes and for an ability to trade connection bandwidth accordingly exists not only in the international arena but also in any national market that allows competition in the field of telecommunications.
The present invention provides a system and method for flexibly routing telecommunications in an efficient manner using resources that are traded in a market. In a preferred embodiment, service providers (typically telecommunications carriers) submit information to a server node, which is a component of a global network. This information constitutes a service offer, which contains cost and service parameter data for routing a communication from a first location to a second location. The server node receives all of the submitted service offers, evaluates them, and generates a rate-table database. The database contains prices and associated efficient routing paths for connecting any two or more (e.g., for conferencing) locations in a telecommunications network and the parameters (e.g., quality, bandwidth, etc.) related to these routing paths. The server node may be programmed to substantially optimize the rate-table database with respect to one or more parameters, such as price, telecommunications network utilization, return traffic volumes, and others.
Service requesters (typically also telecommunications carriers) submit service requests to the server node, which identifies efficient routes that meet the requesters"" requirements, and brokers sales of telecommunications resources (or connect time) from service providers to service requesters. Connect time may be purchased on a transaction-by-transaction (e.g., call-by-call) basis or in larger blocks. Purchasing a block of connect time is akin to reserving a block of telecommunications resources (e.g., a telecommunications path with specified parameters such as bandwidth and call-termination services) for the use of the service requester. Bulk-reservation requests may be submitted manually by a systems manager at the service requester (typically through the use of a terminal or other device equipped to submit such requests), or automatically by a telecommunications node associated with the service requester. Often, a service requester will also be a service provider. The telecommunications node may be programmed to dynamically monitor current volume and sell or buy telecommunication time or bandwidth on the basis of the actual and predicted demand.
The server node administers all aspects of the trades and the resulting changes in global network operations, billing, and settlements. The functions of the server node may include authentication of carriers, matching service requests with service offers, risk management, financial transactions, settlement, contract management, tracking the physical links connecting different portions of the global network, administering telecommunications nodes, updating the rate-table database, and ensuring the synchronization of all instances of that database.
When a carrier wishes to establish telecommunications (for example, a voice call) via a route it had purchased (bulk-reserved) through the global network, the carrier (service requester) passes supervision to a local telecommunications node of the global network, which establishes transmission via the bulk-reserved routing path. Alternatively, the service requester may choose to have the global network use the rate-table database to route its calls (subject to parameters established by the service requester) on a call-by-call basis over telecommunication resources offered by service providers through the server node. The local telecommunications node can compare the cost of providing service through the carrier""s own network with the cost of providing it via the server node of the global network. If internal costs are within acceptable margins of the cost available in the global network, the telecommunications node may hand control of the call back to the carrier""s international gateway switch. If all internal resources are occupied or if the price advantage available through the network exceeds a pre-established threshold value, the server node may continue to process the request. When the request for service reaches the server node, it evaluates the availability of matching resources based on criteria pre-established by the requester or included in the request. If a match is found, the server node acts to clear the transaction as described herein. If a match is not found, the server node signals the telecommunication node that the request is rejected. The telecommunication node may then attempt to complete the call using other means available to the carrier. The global network will permit carriers who reserved blocks of specific route capacities from service providers to resell that reserved capacity or portions thereof either as reservable bulk capacity or on a call-by-call basis. In this case, the service requester also plays the role of a service provider.
When necessary, the global network employs particular SS7 codes, C7 codes, C5 codes, IN codes, or other data messages (or combinations of the above based on the technological capability of various switches/gateways in the routing path) to inform a switch in the routing path that an incoming telecommunication transaction is in transit to a different location, and is not for termination at the location of the switch. In this way, switches can distinguish terminating traffic from transit traffic and set rates for transit traffic without invoking settlement agreement accounting rates.
In a preferred embodiment the global network is capable of displaying market-price information related to the supported telecommunications routes to prospective sellers (service providers) and buyers (service requesters) of connection time. This display is preferably in the form of a streaming banner generated by a Java applet running on the customer""s PC. Buyers and sellers can, by clicking on a specific displayed component, initiate an offer to provide or request services in the context of the clicked component.
While the preferred embodiments are described in terms of a calling telephone and a called telephone, it will be understood that the invention may be practiced using all manner of user equipment. By way of example, but not limitation, this user equipment may include answering machines, fax machines, video conferencing equipment, local switches (such as in hotels or offices), voice synthesis/recognition equipment, dialers, answering services, routers, bridges, access devices, and computers.
Moreover, while some of the preferred embodiments are primarily described in terms of a voice telephone call from a calling telephone to a called telephone, it will be understood that the global network of the present invention may embrace all classes of connectivity, including by way of example, but without limitation, data transmissions, voice over IP, PSTN transmissions, ATM, FR, packet network transmissions, and virtual networks. Furthermore, transmissions may be routed via paths composed of calling-legs which employ different transmission technologies, both wired and wireless.